I need some assistance with these assignment. affirmative action in social psychology Thank you in advance for the help! Affirmative action is one of the major controversial policy issues in the contemporary United States. Even though opponents, as well as supporters, sometimes engage in vicious debates in courts and media social psychologists have taken a step of examining psychological origins. These psychological origins are of favorable as well as unfavorable opinions of affirmative action. They specifically examine how these policies are related to racial equality. Several factors ranging from prejudice and racial resentment to self-interest have been found to be the antecedents of United States’ opposition to affirmative action which only favors minority groups.

Even though gender and racial attitudes have recently become more open since those time times in the 1960s when affirmative action was incepted, support for affirmative action is generally still not small. This essay does not overlook the effect of self-interest, prejudice or any form of political beliefs aimed at shaping attitudes. However, this essay will aim at complementing the picture by looking at the role cultural values towards determining the psychological construal of this issue in the society.

In a certain case in 1978, the United States Supreme Court gave a ruling that using college quota in making decisions concerning college admission greatly violated the Equal Protection Clause. This clause, which was included the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States’ constitution, strongly states that “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” With this landmark ruling eliminating racial quotas, the race was not allowed to be taken into consideration in making decisions about admission in schools and colleges. The aim of eliminating this quota was to achieve a diverse student body (Crosby et al, 2001).